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• LETTER: NOLAN: New York sports and suburban bars decimated by smoking ban 

Health Minister Micheál Martin has used Mayor Bloomberg’s unsupported statistics to impose a harsher non-smoking law on Ireland’s bars this week, in the hope that Irish adults will forgo cigarettes and lead healthier lives.

Meantime, smoking has not vanished in New York. Despite a tripling of the tax on cigarettes, and a $100 million dollar advertising campaign to encourage smokers to quit, there is no evidence one year later that people are giving up cigarettes, or leading healthier lives.

There is, however, ample evidence that the small business sector has been detrimentally affected by the smoking ban.

Last week members of the Republican majority in the New York senate proposed an amendment which would allow smoking in certain air-filtered sections of bars, and would provide tax incentives for bars which declare themselves non-smoking establishments.

Ireland would do well to follow their compromise, as quickly as they copied their mistakes. -- Brian Nolan,

Executive Director,

United Restaurant & Tavern Owners of New York, Inc,

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